Industrial automation generally refers to the use of control systems to increase the productivity and/or quality of an industrial process. An “industrial process” generally refers to any type of process that facilitates the production of goods or the delivery of services. A “control system” generally refers to a device or set of devices that manage, command, direct, or regulate the behavior of other devices utilized within an industrial process. The “control system” can be managed by an “industrial controller,” such as a programmable logic controller, a programmable automation controller, or the like.
Data related to a control system is generally stored according to various structural organizations. For example, instances of the data can be stored according to different hierarchies (corresponding to different hierarchical trees). Each different hierarchical tree arranges data in a different manner. Hierarchies and other structural organizations are necessary to provide a high level view of relationships between content, including the data, within the control system and to facilitate navigation through the content to reach the data for manipulation.
Control systems utilize different hierarchies to arrange content, including a logical hierarchy, a physical hierarchy, a control hierarchy and a network hierarchy, among other hierarchies. To accommodate any conceivable situation, developers of control systems keep adding additional hierarchies that may be needed by a user in different situations. While the different hierarchies are necessary to accommodate all conceivable situations, the average user is often confused by the many different hierarchies.
The above-described background is merely intended to provide an overview of contextual information regarding different structural organizations that can be used to store data related to control systems, and is not intended to be exhaustive. Additional context may become apparent upon review of one or more of the various non-limiting embodiments of the following detailed description.